vcenter essentials edition Active Directory logon issue

[BrechtMonkerhey]

Hello,

I'm having problems with my VSphere 5.1 setup (essentials edition, max 3 hosts). I installed the vcenter virtual appliance without any problem but I can't add AD users to the permissions configuration.

The vcenter appliance shows up in AD just fine and "domainjoin-cli query" tells me the appliance is domain joined.

I've added some screenshots to illustrate my problem.

I have no option to select AD users

My management screen seems to be limited compared to screenshots I found on the internet. When I click on "configure authentication", nothing happens. I have re-run the Setup Wizard to no avail.

I have no problem joining separate esxi hosts to AD and logging into them using AD accounts.

[spravtek · Accepted solution]

Hi,

Welcome to the community.

Some questions:

- What user are you using to login to the vCenter appliance via the vSphere client?

- Did you try using the vSphere Web Client? What does it look like there?

- How is your SSO configured?

[yannara]

I have exact the same issue with Appliance. My discussion is below in this thread.

[BrechtMonkerhey]

Hello,

thank you for your reply.

I'm now using the default root user to log in.

It seems like I have been missing the big picture about SSO. I installed the appliance using the wizard and didn't pay attention to the SSO configuration (which passed by with a couple of "default settings" clicks)

I have fixed it by doing this:

1. I have logged in to the vcenter appliance using the web client and unlocked the "admin" account of the Domain-System domain. I also changed the password
   (more info here: http://www.virtuallyghetto.com/2012/09/default-password-for-vcenter-sso-admin.html)
2. logged in to the web client again using admin@Domain-System credentials
3. Added our AD domain to the Identity sources using this excellent manual
   http://www.gabesvirtualworld.com/adding-ad-authentication-to-vmware-sso-5-1/

After this I could log in to the vsphere client using the local root account and give permissions to AD groups, which is what I wanted.

Take care when using the Vsphere appliance: there are some differences concering default users and passwords and these are not always mentioned in online documentation.

Thank you Spravtek for pointing me into the right direction!

[spravtek]

Good job finding the solution and thanks for summing up what you've done

... Glad to point you in the right direction!